Robinson Crusoe
By Chris Hyde
October 12, 2004
DVD outfit VCI specializes in the neglected and overlooked with their catalog; a new release by Luis Bunuel is no exception.
With so many different companies mining the celluloid past these days, you’d think that it might be hard to find a niche that hasn’t yet been exploited. But the people at VCI Entertainment always seem to find something unique to uncover - be they obscure film noirs, old sword ‘n sandals peplum, forgotten TV shows like Fractured Flickers or even a country music/horror/comedy hybrid like Hillbillys in a Haunted House. Recently they’ve dusted off one chestnut that’s a cut above in quality from many of their lower brow offerings: a version of Daniel Dafoe’s epic novel Robinson Crusoe helmed by the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel.
Bunuel’s brilliant life in film stretches from his early surrealist days (at which point he made the movement defining Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or) to his later, more mature works like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. In between these career tentpoles he filmed a whole range of projects, including a 1954 double foray into the canon of classic literature. The first of the books that he tackled that year was Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and the director’s take on this broodingly tragic tale is greatly respected and relatively well renowned. The other, his take on the quintessential castaway story, is sometimes glossed over when taking stock of his amazing career; but this striking new version of the film indicates that this is an oversight that should be remedied immediately.
Given Bunuel’s iconoclastic style and out-of-the-mainstream political bent, it might seem that Dafoe’s realist tale of a shipwrecked Westerner is an odd choice of material for the filmmaker. But in many ways the novel’s themes of alienation and loneliness match up with the director’s vision just perfectly, and the narrative’s exploration of man’s often bleak spiritual relationship with the universe is a theme that recurs often in Bunuel’s oeuvre. Pretty faithful to its source, this visually sumptuous version of the historic story manages to transport the material into the cinema without marring the simple beauty of the original — and yet this celluloid vision is unique enough that in the hands of its director, the saga is transformed into an adventure story with a few more teeth than before.
The general outline of the story here should come as no surprise to most readers, as the Crusoe archetype is well established in today’s popular culture. The basic tale has even had some pretty recent incarnations, from the execrable Pierce Brosnan '90s version to the bit of postmodern thievery that was Tom Hanks’ Cast Away. The essential underlying drive of Dafoe’s plot is more or less simplicity itself: during the late 1600s, a young man takes sail to explore the world and through the vagaries of happenstance ends up marooned alone on a remote island. This individual’s battles to remain sane in a hostile environment and to survive by his wits alone form the bedrock structure of the narrative.
Played here by Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy (who received an Oscar nomination for his efforts), the character of Crusoe spends most of the first hour of the film merely attempting to carve a living from his harsh surroundings. This would-be slave trader scavenges what he can from the remains of the ship and sets about using the technological know-how of the west to stay alive. Utterly devoid of human companions, he does at least manage to find two fellow survivors in the wreck’s hold that offer some small respite: a cat named Sam and the dog Rex. The latter is especially important to Crusoe’s eventual success as an island dweller and this canine’s ultimate fate provides the film with its single most heartbreaking moment.
As Crusoe ekes a solitary existence from what the island offers, he attempts to keep from going crazy through work, religion and the constant hope of eventual rescue. After long years of being completely solo, he eventually realizes that some local cannibals at times use the other side of “his” island for their human feasts of flesh; and while watching them set up shop for a barbecue one day, he then helps to save one of their hapless victims. At first he mistrusts and patronizes this young savage that he comes to call Friday, but as they spend time together he comes to question the morality of his relationship with his charge. Never one to shy away from the more outré insinuations of the material with which he works, Bunuel makes sure to touch on the latent implications of this relationship in a manner that Dafoe certainly never dared.
It’s through this interaction with Friday that Bunuel makes many of his most salient points; in fact, the native is so perceptive as to reveal to Crusoe the necessity of evil in a universe ruled by a seemingly all-powerful god. With his deft and at times ambiguous style, the director examines multiple aspects of man’s existence and the morality that governs behavior. Never providing his audience with easy answers, Bunuel tells this tale in a way that capably displays its themes without making them overt or heavy handed; in fact, the framework of the adventure story allows this film to be read either as a fairly straight reworking of the novel or more deeply as a comment on the existential conditions that make up man’s presence on the planet.
Apart from its intellectual value as an expression of the director’s unique outlook, Robinson Crusoe is also historically interesting for its introduction of Bunuel to the world of the color film. Using a far more wide-ranging palette than nearly any of his other works (a fact that the director attributed in the main to cinematographer Alex Phillips), the chromatic sense given reign here makes the tropical island that is the film’s set come alive with vitality. It’s especially noticeable in VCI’s lovingly restored DVD edition of the film, as the excellent transfer allows the beautiful Pathé tints to come through in nice fashion.
The work that VCI has undertaken to restore Robinson Crusoe is also amply demonstrated in the extras that are provided with this 50th anniversary edition, as a short before and after segment allows a comparison between the mangled materials that they had to labor to clean up and its sparkling new version. While things still aren’t 100% perfect (softness abounds here and there in the transfer and there are occasionally other flaws that keep the print from being pristine), those involved have done a wonderful job in removing what they could and providing an edition that is eminently watchable. There are some additional bonuses included on this reasonably priced disc as well: the standard photo and poster galleries, a foldout reproduction of the film’s pressbook and a lengthy 50 minute audio interview with the movie’s star.
Long considered by many to be one of cinema’s most individualistic of craftsmen, Luis Bunuel’s body of work has been generally well pored over by critics and scholars. While his more famous projects are certainly high profile enough to be considered standard touchstones of film history, this version of Robinson Crusoe is often forsaken when the director’s career is discussed. By providing the world with a gorgeous new digital version of one of the idiosyncratic filmmaker’s most fascinating projects, VCI Entertainment has done much for the posterity of cinema. For the restored release of any significant outing by Bunuel would itself be a boon for students of the celluloid past; but that this is one of his most disregarded masterpieces should be cause for celebration amongst that same set.
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